Free Turn of the Century by Kurt Andersen

killing his twin brother, then produced a highly rated movie of the week based on the accident, which led to a successful career phase as a “long-form” TV producer. (He claims he was the first producer to show “female butt cleavage,” as he calls it, in network prime time.) Then he worked as a programming executive under both Howard Stringer (smart Merry Chatterer) at CBS and Brandon Tartikoff (an exotic hybrid: Inscrutable Chatterer) at NBC, then briefly at Fox and VH1, and now here he is at the MBC, practically in charge. “So, I don’t want you guys to be blindsided in there. I want to set the table for you on Harold’s state of mind, okay?”
    “Is there a problem?” George asks.
    “No. Absolutely uh-uh.
Niènte
. But ownership’s back on the table, comrades.”
    MBC owns half of
NARCS
, and although it’s successful, which gives George and Emily some leverage, they have already agreed to give the network half ownership of any future MBC series they create.
    “A longer license term?” Emily asks, all nice disingenuous calm. “He wants five years instead of four?”
    “No,” Timothy says, “we’re going to want one hundred percent ownership on the new shows, but with a guaranteed back end for you guys, as well as—”
    “Timothy,” Emily shouts, “we’re not … 
employees
. We’re not—”
    “Emmo, Emmo, Emmo,” Featherstone says. “Don’t go there, Emiline.”
    “Full ownership?” she says. “No. Unacceptable.”
    George had been surprised that MBC hadn’t demanded more ownership earlier. He’s always quietly preparing for the worst, ready for the secret trapdoor to swing open directly under hiiiiiiiiiim. It is automatic. Anytime any boss asks to meet with him, he steels himself, ready to be fired. If Lizzie is more than a half hour late coming home, he starts imagining her raped, then murdered, the phone call to her father, life as a widower. Since things usually turn out much better than awful, George feels lucky most of the time. And if they don’t, he’s ready.
    For several seconds, no one makes a sound.
    “Em,” George finally says, “we’ve said ourselves that
Reality
is not going to have a billion-dollar syndication life. This isn’t exactly
ER
. Back-end ownership—”
    “Or
Baywatch
,” Featherstone adds, a beat late.
    “—is really kind of a theoretical deal point here.”
    She gives George a hard look. George is not just caving in, but ganging up with the second-dumbest man in television to humiliate her with a smile, in the name of reason and easy compromise. This was why she had come to despise the president of the United States long before impeachment. Not because he was a liar, or a sex addict (Emily, as it happened, went down on him once, in a limousine outside the Hotel Inter-Continental during the 1992 convention in New York), but because he’s just a high-end New Man gone pathological, slipping and slithering on a dime.
    “For
Reality
, maybe,” she says, playing along against her instincts. “It’s different. But everything else is straight-ahead entertainment. Long shelf lives.”
    “Riiiight … ?” Featherstone says.
    “Right,
what?
” she spits.
    “But Timothy,” George asks, “what is the argument for the network owning shows like
My People, Your People
or
The Odds
or
Actually Bizarre?
” These are the three other series George and Emily have in development. They are, respectively, an hour-long “sitcom of manners” about husband and wife executives; a zany “alternative” comedy set in Las Vegas; and a cross between
The Twilight Zone
and
Candid Camera
in which unwitting “contestants” would secretly be taped as apparently supernatural tricks (UFOs, phantasms, emptied offices) are played on them.
    “Well, we’re prepared to give
Reality
a thirty-nine-week commitment. Rock solid.”
    This is news. George and Emily have asked for twenty-six weeks, were hoping for thirteen, and prepared for six. (George has been prepared for